HEALING: A Process

📷: https://pin.it/2Hsqq8U

When things don’t turn out the way we want them to it shakes up our plans. It shakes us up.

Do you remember your first bike ride? I know I do. I remember the feeling of learning how to ride it the first time. How the wind felt against my skin as I rode it. It was addictive. I never wanted to stop. Not until my first big fall. The unexpected pain that comes with falling is worse than the wound it gave me. I found myself scared to ride a bike ever again or to even stand up right after I fell, so I never did.

When things hurt you bad, you do anything and everything to avoid it from happening again. Sometimes if the wounds are too deep, they become scars that never leave. I still have my bike scar and every time I look at it I remember why I don’t like riding bikes.

The scar itself is not painful anymore but the memory of how much it hurt is still there.

Now that’s a little over dramatic for a bike scar is it? But how does one heal after a painful memory? A disappointment or rejection? A heart break?

I’ve read books, online articles, took advices from friends, family and even strangers but no matter what I saw and heard, I realized that none of them would work unless I was really up for it- that I wanted it for me.

Majority though of the advice that I was able to pick up was that HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE- MY CHOICE, ACTUALLY.

As confusing as it might sound, I would agree depending on the situation but not entirely. For me, emotions and feelings aren’t things we can easily control. We can learn how to set them aside or tolerate them for a while, but eventually they’re going to surface whether we like it or not. In places and times we never expected them too, even from people we don’t want to.

We won’t even realize that it has affected our daily life. They’re what I like to call, both our human blessing and curse.

This is why I can’t completely agree that happiness is a choice. Although I can agree that doing things that make us happy or think of happy thoughts and moments is a choice that we can make and should most definitely take.

So, what really is the secret? How do we move on and let go of things or people we have grown accustomed to having? How do we break a relationship we thought would last longer than we expected? Leave places we thought we’d stay in forever or take back words we’ve already thrown? How do we stop the endless cycle of guilt, doubt and endless flashbacks of it every night? Of being hurt by everything that reminds us of what used to be or what should have been?

I have been through a number of painful events myself and after years and months of healing, I was able to step back and analyze the situations that I have been in.

The few things I have learned and wish I knew back then were that number one, before anything else, Acceptance is first and foremost.

I know you’ve probably heard about this a million times- I know I have. It sounds cliche and just easy to say. Sometimes it’s even offending as we’d think it’s unfair to let it pass. But accepting something doesn’t mean you’re okay with it, that you‘re not allowed to be hurt or angry by what happened. It simply means there is no more denying that it did.

You have to understand that there are situations you cannot control, things you cannot change and words or people you cannot take back.

What comes after it is two, Allowing yourself to feel everything that needs to be felt.

In the exact words of Augustus Waters, “pain demands to be felt.” In fact, all emotions and feelings demand to be felt. When you bottle all of these up or pretend that they aren’t there they DO NOT disappear. They only build up inside of you and the longer you carry it, the heavier it feels.

Cry if you have to. Be angry! Be outraged! Be sad!

Feel it. Own it. Allow it.

It doesn’t make you any less of a person, it’s not a sign of weakness. You’re human! Let it hurt you until it hurts you no more. Whatever you’re feeling is valid and you have every right to feel it.

After the denial and finally allowing all of it to sink in, it’s going to be a long painful process. I can’t promise that after you cry it out today, tomorrow it gets better. Personally, it took me more than a year to finally compose myself finally and let go of that pain.

There are days where you’d feel like it’s finally okay but then you wake up otherwise tomorrow, even weeks or months you can go on normally. But when things do out of the blue fall apart, it’s important for you to remember that three, Healing has no definite time frame.

Some days, even when you’ve went through the steps i’ve mentioned above, you will still find yourself falling back to square one. You find yourself perfectly fine today but tomorrow it will hurt like it only happened yesterday. It will feel unfair and frustrating but take it one day at a time. Be kind to yourself about it.

Healing is a tough job. It‘s a brave choice.

No matter the words I give you in this blog, at the end of the day, none of this will matter unless you really want this for yourself.

Four is, TAKING ACTION.

Leave the people you have to leave. Let go of those you need to let go and forgive even those who never apologized. Stop running around looking for answers. Stop changing someone’s mind.

When people joked about needing to love someone new to forget, I wasted my time looking for that distraction. It worked for a while. I did forget. But it never helped. I only ended up sharing and inflicting my pain on other people. The wounds I wanted to heal only got deeper. The sadness I hid during the day, hit me harder at night. In some sense, they were right though, I did need to love someone new.

And so I did.

I decided to love myself.

One day I genuinely hope you wake up with that complete feeling in your heart. With no more voids to fill in and pieces to look for. Trust me when I say all of the pain you’re feeling now is temporary.

Wounds might hurt but they always heal.

Yours, Yna.

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My song playlist while writing:

• That’s Us (Anson Seabra)

• Be Alright (Dean Lewis)

• Hold On (Chord Overstreet)